Yorkshire Almanac 2025

Unedited excerpt

The excerpt in the book is shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

Friday, 13 October
A most successful tour. It was a great moment to get out into the Pennines along the route of the M62 and to see, up in the hills, a Yorkshire RCU crane on the skyline – ‘Colonel Lovell coming to meet us from the Yorkshire end.’ This, the first east-west motorway, will revolutionize east-west links. I intend that there shall be more of these cross routes, instead of the endless radial routes into London. After a day talking to Drake, I can really begin to see how I can get better planning and priorities into the roads programme.

Scare about a bomb in my sleeper. The Preston CID were at the station to see me safely aboard. I slept well.

Saturday, 14 October
Emerging from my sleeper I ran into Harold back from his trip to the northern region. ‘That was a good speech of yours: roads for regional development. I’ve been quoting it all over the place.’ ‘Yes, I’m determined to use roads more for this. It is the Treasury that has been the trouble with its insistence on economic return as the measurement. You just build where the traffic already is that way.’ ‘Did you clear it with the Treasury?’ ‘No. I just jumped the gun.’ He laughed. ‘They’ll say it has got to come out of your PESC allocation.’ Well, I know that.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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The photo is taken from the A672 Oldham Road above Booth Wood Reservoir and appears to show Broad Ing Farm – did that survive?

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Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Castle, Barbara (1910-2002) (2), Labour MP 1945-79, several Cabinet roles under Harold Wilson, only woman to have held the office of First Secretary of State W/G ·
• HM Treasury (2) W/G ·
• Labour Party (UK) (17) W/G ·
• Labour government, 1964–1970 (2) W/G ·
• Lancashire (35) W/G ·
• Lovell, Stuart Maynard (1), West Riding county engineer (1949-69), prime mover in motorway-building from the mid-1950s (M1, M62, A1) W/G ·
• M62 motorway (3) W/G ·
• Northern England (8) W/G ·
• North–South divide in England (3) W/G ·
• Pennines (11) W/G ·
• Regional development (1) W/G ·
• Road transport (14) W/G ·
• 📌Scammonden Bridge (1) W/G ·
• Spatial inequality (1) W/G ·
• West Riding of Yorkshire (151) W/G ·
• Wilson, Harold (1916-1995) (4), Huddersfield-born prime minister (1964-70, 1974-76), leader of the Labour Party (1963-76), MP (1945-83) W/G ·

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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The photo is taken from the A672 Oldham Road above Booth Wood Reservoir and appears to show Broad Ing Farm – did that survive?

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Similar

18 January 1966: Barbara Castle (Lab.) swings the Hull North by-election with a bridge over the Humber, convincing Harold Wilson that he has the momentum to win a general election

15 April 1985: Hervey Rhodes tells his fellow lords how, on the abolition of the Ridings in 1974, Saddleworth caused the invention of Greater Manchester

19 October 1816: Serenaded by the military, decorated barges leave Leeds for Liverpool to celebrate the completion, after almost 50 years, of the canal uniting east and west

28 January 1069: In the first major northern battle after Hastings, Tynesiders slaughter a Norman army at Durham, whereupon William the Conqueror ravages the north

15 November 1972: During the public inquiry into York Council’s plans for a motorway through the city centre, a college lecturer calls for the new religion to be made tangible

29 February 1824: Prophet John Wroe is baptised on the Leap Day in the Aire near Apperley Bridge before an audience of 30,000

28 April 1812: Methodist Luddites fatally wound the textile manufacturer William Horsfall on his way home from Huddersfield market

19 November 1715: Writing to the astronomer John Flamsteed, Abraham Sharp of Little Horton (Bradford) hopes that defeat at the Battle of Preston will end local Jacobite aspirations

11 July 1844: The botanist James Backhouse Jnr. and colleagues walk from Settle over Malham Cove, Gordale Scar and Arncliffe Clowder to Arncliffe

4 September 1947: Conflicting hopes for the future of the nationalised coal industry, as a wildcat strike against increased hours at Grimethorpe spreads through the South Yorkshire coalfield

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Re this wave of unofficial strikes:

Major-General Sir Noel Holmes, chairman of the north-eastern division of the National Coal Board, in a statement yesterday on the strike at Grimethorpe Colliery, said that 140 coal-face workers, out of 2,682 employed at the pit, were not doing a fair day’s work. A committee representing management and workmen had decided that the stint for the 140 workers should be increased by 2ft., but they refused to accept its findings and came out on strike. The other coal-face workers came out in sympathy. “As much as I dislike mentioning this fact,” said Sir Noel Holmes, “it is only right to recall that at Grimethorpe since January 1, 1947, and before the present strike, there have been 26 sectional unofficial stoppages, which have lost 33,000 tons of coal to the nation. The present stoppage up to date represents a further loss of more than 40,000 tons.” (Times 1947/08/27)

Holmes’s Wikipedia article curiously doesn’t mention this phase of his career.

I’m guessing that the Welsh ex-Puritan authoritarian Communist Arthur Horner is the voice of the NUM in the above – see e.g. the Times for 9 September.

Interesting comments on the wartime coal boards by T.S. Charlton, colliery manager at Cortonwood:

The management of the collieries is in the hands of men trained primarily in management of mines and miners. They have a working knowledge of all the machinery available and how best it can be used, but the details of this side are left to the mechanical and electrical engineer. Labour costs are two-thirds of production costs, and therefore the handling and the best use of men are of the greatest importance to managers. Why it should have been decided that labour leaders should be good labour directors is, apart from the political issue, difficult to understand, unless it is on the old adage of “poacher turned gamekeeper.” Unless and until the production director has control of his labour side, I can see little hope of his schemes proving effective.

The miners have put forward suggestions to improve output, but they appear to do no more than improve the position of the miner. Can it be said that any suggestion already put forward by the men has put up the output figure? Why should it be assumed the men’s side of the pit production committees should be able to improve output in any way? Their training, inclinations, and very job depend upon their obtaining the best for their electors rather than for production.
(Charlton 1943/12/01)

Charlton was clearly a clever and capable man – it would be good to know more about him.

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